You’re among the last of the 250-odd students to cross the stage. It’s the 2025 Brighton Secondary School valedictory event and I’m in Section E of the Adelaide Entertainment Centre. Adjusting my suit jacket, I browse about at the parents, siblings, and grandparents. Cologne pushes at me from a neighbouring dad. The jazz ensemble now hushes and we’re ready.

Our social contract is that we wait good-naturedly for our child to have their moment and be formally farewelled. I elect to clap each graduate while surveying their year 8 and year 12 photos, projected onto twin screens.

The sudden ruthless truth hit me this morning as I drove down Port Road, past the Entertainment Centre and saw the ceremony advertised on the colossal display. The height of the digital lettering was striking and the idea of you finishing school and entering the adult world became suddenly tangible and undeniable.

A long hour into the presentations and I’m impatient to see you. I repeatedly glance to the right of stage, hoping to spy you into the theatrical dark, searching for your blonde mop. But the unbroken procession of students persists.

Finally, your home group is announced. I can just see you in the wings: tall, cheerful, casual. Your turn approaches. An amplified voice says, ‘Alex Randall.’

I watch from Section E. Entering the stage, your long legs are relaxed and you’re respectfully laconic. I note that you’re purposeful but not panicked, in reaching centerstage. Years of drama productions have taught you to luxuriate in this, to add an extra beat. As a school student, it’s your final bow.

Now firmly under the spotlight, you arrive alongside the principal, Mr. Lunniss, and pause, beaming your easy smile. You almost look like you’ve just been told a small (Dad) joke and find it bemusing. Next to the angular, retiring educator, you establish your affable presence on the stage. There’s no arrogance in your stance, only a natural, infectious joy.

As you take your souvenirs — a navy-blue book and programme — my evening’s most poignant moment arrives. As your Dad, sitting in the vast auditorium, it sparks an inner welling and a hot tear for it shows heartening regard, and gratitude. It’s a hope-inspiring gesture, likely undetected by most in the audience, on this evening of goodbyes and celebrations.

You’ve told me you’ve no relationship with the principal and this is better than you being marched habitually into his office where he peers over his glasses and despairingly asks, ‘What have you done now, Randall?’ Instead, the reality is far more gracious. Beneath the arena lights I’m thrilled when Mr. Lunniss hands you the official gift of school stationery and you nod acknowledgment at him.

I instantly recognise this voluntarily offered thankfulness as a buoyant symbol. It’s gladdening. I wish for a dazzling adulthood in which you possess a sophisticated grasp of the silent machinery required to make life bend to your happy will.

Such was the equivalence that I could imagine you and the principal at a front bar: ‘Alex, your shout.’ It’s also, any witness would attest, a courteous transaction between two men — but with it away rushes the last of your childhood and in Section E, I’m an anonymous, hushed spectator.

The entire village has invested in you Alex, and some now watched on and could smile to themselves at the illuminating role they’d performed, the kindnesses they often extended, the gentle hands placed on your shoulder. It’s been an acutely elevating instance — a bright, cloudless dawn. A single, fleeting nod on a wide stage — and just like that, your school years are done.